


Precious Metal

by ghostchibi



Series: Arcverse [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Agender Character, Community: falloutkinkmeme, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 05:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5653504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostchibi/pseuds/ghostchibi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lost ring, a frantic Arc, a helpful Danse, and a great deal of understanding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precious Metal

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my fill on the Fallout kmeme of [this prompt](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/6855.html?thread=17139399).

The scream that practically echoes through Sanctuary Hills is, quite frankly, beyond alarming. Danse immediately recognizes it as Arc's voice, and his brain goes straight into panic mode.

The truth is, he's never heard Arc make any noise like that. It's a hair-raising, glass-shattering kind of scream, and Arc is hardly a person to yell or scream in the first place. Danse fully expects to find a dead body when he arrives, forcing his way through the front door and the door to Arc's room with his unprotected shoulder. Running with power armor might have been tactically more sound, but getting in takes too much time and the actual act of running in power armor is exhausting.

Instead of dead bodies or a deathclaw, Danse finds Arc tearing up their bedroom in a frenzied hurry.

"...Arc?" he asks warily. Arc doesn't seem to have noticed his presense yet, too busy attempting to remove a drawer from its slot via a combined application of hands and feet. The drawer breaks, wood splinters, and the contents of the drawer fly everywhere.

"Arc!"

That finally makes the former vault dweller pause.  
  
"Arc, are you alright? I heard you-" Danse begins, but his voice falters when he sees the look on Arc's face. A combination of creeping terror, and utter despair.  
  
Danse's heart breaks.  
  
"I can't- I can't find it!" Arc wails, actually _wails_ , and Danse has to remove the broken piece of wood from their hands before they hurt themself on it. "Danse, I can't find it, I don't know where it's gone-"  
  
"What? What's gone? What happened?"  
  
"NATE'S RING!"  
  
Oh.  
  
Oh no.  
  
"It's gone," Arc whimpers, voice barely above a whisper. "Danse, it's... I don't know where it is. I can't find it. I took it with me, because I- I don't remember why anymore. But I had it, and I was going to put it back, but it's not on me and it's not in the room anywhere, I don't know where it could have gone-"  
  
Danse places one hand on Arc's shoulder, shaking them back to reality. Arc stares at Danse, wide-eyed, tears streaming down their face.  
  
"It has to be somewhere," he reassures, and it feels so strange to be the one to calm Arc, rather than the other way around as it usually is. Arc has helped him so much; if Danse can help Arc, he's going to do so, even if it means combing through miles of dirt and rock to find one wedding band. "Take a moment to calm down. You'll remember much better once you're calm."  
  
Arc nods, takes a huge gulping breath, and Danse carefully pulls them against his shoulder into a hug. Both arms wrap around Danse's shoulders, shaking for a minute or so, before it dies down and Arc finally speaks again.  
  
"This morning, I woke up and I... I wasn't doing well. I missed Nate. A lot," Arc begins. "And I thought that maybe, if... if I had his ring with me, I would feel better. So I put my ring on a chain, and wore his instead on my finger."  
  
Arc is indeed wearing their ring on their neck instead, hanging from a ball chain, and Arc's hand is quite notably missing the silver band.  
  
"It... it must have slipped off at some point. Nate's ring is bigger than my fingers, of course, but I wanted to wear it. I needed to feel something there. And... And I'm a fucking moron, a useless crybaby-"  
  
"Hey."  
  
Danse's interruption startles Arc a little. His voice is deep and serious.  
  
"You needed some support. There's nothing wrong with that. We'll find Nate's ring, okay? I promise."  
  
Arc nods tearfully, rubbing their thumb against their eye.  
  
"Okay," they manage to mumble out. "Okay. Okay."

* * *

"...and of course, Nate thinks he knows how to replant them. And before you ask, no, he had no idea. So he 'replants' the sunflowers, and they, of course, wither and die because it wasn't done right."  
  
Arc gestures vaguely toward the back wall of the house, as if attempting to show Danse said sunflowers that are now lost to time and nuclear fallout. They're standing in the right spot, at any rate.  
  
"What did you do?" he asks, looking up from the ground for just a moment before his eyes return to scanning across the dirt.  
  
"Oh, get upset, maybe a little bit mad," Arc replies, nudging a rock of of the way with their foot. "And Nate, well, his honor as my husband is tarnished, or something. Who knows. Military men with their weird sense of that kind of thing."  
  
"Should I be insulted?"  
  
"You're not married, Danse."  
  
There's a twist in his chest at those words.  
  
"True."  
  
"So yeah. So, he goes out and buys me more sunflowers. Not seeds, actual sunflowers. In his dumb pick-up, he comes back with... I can't even remember how many plants he had. Enough to replace all of the ones I lost. Hauls all of them into the backyard, asks me specifically how they need to be replanted. Does all the replanting myself, makes me watch as he does it, but doesn't let me do any of it. Something about 'bad for the baby' as if me picking up a shovel was going to hurt Shaun, or something like that."  
  
Arc chuckles at the memory. At least now Danse has them distracted from their panic, listening to stories about Nate, and Danse finds that he actually enjoys them. He's never going to have the chance to meet the man who brought Arc so much joy, but at least he can learn as much about Nate as possible through Arc. From what Arc has said already, it seems that Nate was a good man. A loving husband and father. A man dearly missed by his spouse.  
  
It suddenly strikes Danse that he's looking for this man's wedding ring, knees in the dirt and hands raking across broken earth. He's looking for the last remnant of this man left on the planet, doing this for his still-grieving spouse.  
  
Whom Danse has the mother of all crushes on, in fact.  
  
"...I never thought I'd be shoving my hands in the dirt in the same place 200 years later because I couldn't be assed to be careful enough with his wedding ring," Arc sighs, and Danse panics a bit as the sorrow returns.  
  
"We'll find it for sure. I'm sure he would understand," Danse replies almost a bit too hastily.

* * *

Overhead, the sun burns at high noon, the shadows cast by Danse and Arc right below their feet.  
  
"It feels a lot brighter now than before, somehow," Arc says. "But maybe I'm just used to gray skies and rain."  
  
"Rad storms do have a way of lighting up the sky."  
  
Arc barks out a short laugh at that.  
  
"I loved it when it rained, because before all of this happened, you could stand in the rain without worrying about melting, or something. Nate hated the rain. It made him restless. I would stand outside while it came down in buckets, and he'd look like I'd lost my mind."  
  
Arc stares up at the sky, as if expecting water to start falling. The sky is dry and cloudless. Nothing but burning yellow and pure blue.

* * *

Arc hasn't given up. That isn't to say that Arc also isn't exhausted from panicking and crying and searching, because while Arc is still determined to find the ring they are also tired as hell. Danse promises to keep looking, while Arc takes a brief nap to calm down and recharge.  
  
Danse is careful with his footsteps. While stepping on the ring would undoubtedly catch his attention, he doesn't want it damaged any further than it already is. He asks a few of the settlers to keep an eye out, and returns to methodically staring down at the cracked concrete.  
  
Dogmeat has joined him now, sniffing about in an attempt to pick up Arc's scent on the ring. But there are a lot of things with Arc's scent on them, from specific chairs that Arc prefers to the pathways that Arc walks. In any other scenario, the German Shepherd might have been more helpful. But a tiny ring, marked with the scent of a person who has walked all over the settlement, is a tall order for even Dogmeat to fill.  
  
"We'll find it, boy," Danse reassures again, patting the whining dog on the head. "It's here somewhere."  
  
He thinks for a moment, trying to remember where Arc had told him to check. The time is past noon. The sun is angled in the sky; their shadows stretch toward the east now. Danse is hoping to find the ring before night falls.  
  
"Where haven't we checked yet?" he asks Dogmeat. Dogmeat just tilts his head at him.  
  
They stand there for a while, motionless, Danse thinking hard about where to check next. They've gone through a great deal of Sanctuary at this point. The only other options are one path toward the outskirts of the settlement, although Arc had said that they doubted very much that the ring could have fallen outside of Sanctuary.  
  
"Try the grave."  
  
Danse turns to see who is speaking to him, only to find nobody behind him. He doesn't recognize the voice. Dogmeat whines in confusion, pacing around him in search of the voice's owner as well.  
  
"You heard that too?" Danse asks warily.  
  
Dogmeat barks, and paws at the ground uncomfortably.  
  
Even though Arc had told him that it's unlikely, Danse realizes that it's the very last place left to check in Sanctuary. He heads east, walking as if following his shadow as it points him toward the single grave marker within the settlement.

* * *

It's uncomfortable to be in front of the grave of a stranger, on one's hands and knees sifting through dead grass and dry dirt. Especially when one is looking for the wedding ring of said dead stranger.  
  
Maybe stranger isn't the right word to use. Danse has heard a lot today about Nate through Arc. He'd kept Arc talking to keep them distracted, and Arc had been more than happy to supply him with stories. Nate the failed gardener. Nate the romantic. Nate the enthusiastic father. Nate the amazing cook.  
  
Nate, the man who had accepted Arc for absolutely everything they are, and given Arc the closest thing to a normal, happy life that he could.  
  
Danse pauses in his search, sitting down in front of the grave marker. It's just a wooden cross, with _Nathaniel Mitchell_ engraved on the front in a shaky hand.  
  
"You deserved much more time than you had with Arc," Danse says. "Arc is... an amazing person. An amazing friend. Someone I care about deeply."  
  
Dogmeat settles next to him, placing his head in Danse's lap with a soft whine. Danse pats his head affectionately.  
  
"We all care about them, so much. I wish you could be here to see it yourself, all of the good that Arc has done. You deserve to be here more than I do."  
  
A nudge from Dogmeat, this time almost chastising.  
  
"Regardless, I'm here. I'm here because of Arc. Because they told me I deserve to live. And... I think I love Arc. I'm not sure. I don't have anything else to compare this to, this feeling. But I know that I want to keep them safe. I want to help them as much as they helped me."  
  
Danse rises and salutes, arm across his chest and fist pressed against his heart.  
  
"I promise you, I will do my best to keep Arc safe and happy."  
  
It seems futile to promise all of this to a dead man, and yet Danse does it anyway. Because it feels like the right thing to do. It feels like he owes Nate that much. A gust of wind howls in from the west. Danse pulls his arm up to shield his eyes from the dirt and dust, and that's when something catches his eye.  
  
A glinting, in the dirt. His heart jumps in his chest.  
  
Dogmeat hops up and pads over as Danse approaches, sticking his nose into the dirt and nudging the glimmering object out.  
  
A silver ring.  
  
"We found it," Danse says, and looks down to Dogmeat in awe. The shepherd dog barks excitedly at Danse, tongue lolling from his mouth. Hastily, he picks the ring up and dusts it off, checking for any damage. It's slightly scuffed, from simple daily wear and tear as far as Danse can tell, but otherwise undamaged. It had likely fallen from Arc's hand when they'd visited earlier that day. It's almost as if Nate had kept it safe until Danse had found it.  
  
But that's a silly thought, right?  
  
The wind picks up again, whistling through back in the direction of Sanctuary.

* * *

The house is quiet when Danse opens the door, and he grimaces as the door creaks closed behind him. Arc is probably still asleep. Danse waffles between letting them sleep and waking them up now to tell them the good news, when a sigh emanates from the bedroom. Dogmeat trots away ahead of Danse, stopping at the doorway to Arc's room.  
  
"Hey there, boy." Arc's voice carries from inside of the room. "I thought you were out helping Danse."  
  
"He was."  
  
Danse leans in so that Arc can see him, one hand braced on the door frame to keep him from falling. Arc smiles just a little bit, eyes still rimmed red, but at least they look a little more rested.  
  
"Here. I think this belong to you."  
  
He steps past Dogmeat, pulling out Nate's wedding band and holding it out in his hand. Arc's eyes go wide, darting from the ring to Danse's face and back to the ring, and they shakily take it from his hand.  
  
"You... you found it?"  
  
"We found it by Nate's grave."  
  
"Oh, shit. I was spinning it on my finger while I was there talking to him, and... That makes sense."  
  
Arc holds the ring against their chest, tears forming in their eyes again.  
  
"You found it. Oh my god, you found it," Arc whispers. "I don't know how to thank you. Both of you. Thank you so much."  
  
Dogmeat nudges his master's knee, panting happily in response. Danse just smiles.  
  
"It's nothing, compared to what you've done for me."  
  
"You don't have to repay me for anything. Don't do things just because you're trying to repay me for my kindness."  
  
The look on Arc's face turns to a troubled frown.  
  
"I- I wasn't trying to. I promise. I did it because I care about you, and I know how much that rings means to you," Danse replies hastily. "I wanted to help."  
  
"Danse..."  
  
"I mean it, I did it because I love y-"  
  
And Danse claps his hand over his mouth, as if somehow he can drag the words he just spoke back in, as if stopping at the last word will keep Arc from understanding. He's suddenly very painfully aware of the regret that grips him as Arc's eyes go wide again.  
  
They're both quiet for a moment. Dogmeat whines from their feet at the silence.  
  
"I... I apologize," Danse breathes finally, before the panic can set in. "That wasn't- I shouldn't have-"  
  
And then the panic sets in. Danse attempts to bolt; Arc is faster though, and grabs ahold of his arm. The shock on their face has melted into a nervous smile.  
  
"Danse, wait. Please."  
  
He takes in a gulp of air, frozen in place, if only because Arc has asked him to stay.  
  
"Can you finish your sentence, please?"  
  
Danse closes his eyes.  
  
"I... I did it because I... I love you."

Arc's hand slides down to Danse's wrist, holding him loosely there. It's weak enough that Danse can pull away if he wants to. He doesn't.  
  
"You mean that?"  
  
"...yes."  
  
"I'm glad that you're braver than I was."  
  
Danse's eye open in confusion at that. What is that supposed to mean? Arc just stares back with hesitant yet relieved eyes. Danse isn't sure what to make of it.  
  
"I'm still grieving Nate. It still hurts, a lot. But I won't lie, I feel something for you that's not just friendship. You're my friend, Danse, but..."  
  
Arc suddenly looks at the ground, cheeks burning red.  
  
"I think I love you too."  
  
And Danse's world is thrown upside-down again. But this time, it's not so bad, this time it's not being thrown off-balance, tossed away, unstable legs that can't hold him up as his head spins. It's a good kind of upside-down, the kind that leaves butterflies fluttering in his chest and a blush to his face and he has to clench his jaw to keep a laugh from bubbling up. It sneaks past his lips anway, a nervous chuckle that has Arc looking up again with a smile of their own.  
  
The smile turns into a giggle, Danse's chuckle becomes a laugh, and soon the two of them are leaning on each other in hysterics, forehead pressed together and laughter echoing through the room. Even Dogmeat joins in, letting out a short howl and stepping around their legs.  
  
"I had no idea," Danse admits as he attempts to calm himself back down.  
  
"I tried not to let it show," Arc answers. "At first I felt like I was betraying Nate. But he's not here anymore. And I don't think he would want me to live the rest of my life pining over him."  
  
The nervousness in Arc is back, although only for a moment.

"Do you want this?"  
  
"I do."  
  
"Me too. But..."  
  
Arc sighs to compose themself.  
  
"We need to take things slowly. One step at a time. For both of us."  
  
Danse understands what Arc means by that. The two of them love each other. That much is true and understood by both. But Arc is still grieving and hurt by losing Nate, and Danse is still on shaky ground about anything regarding anyone's positive feelings toward him. The idea of anyone caring for him gives him pause. It had taken a long time for Danse to even begin to be able to accept that anyone cared enough for him to call him their friend. But this is something much different from calling him a friend. And it scares him, almost, to be loved, and to love someone.  
  
Almost.  
  
"Thank you so much, Danse," Arc murmurs, arm wrapping around his waist to pull him into a hug. "For everything."

* * *

Several months later, Arc holds out the very ring that Danse had scoured every inch of Sanctuary to find, watching Danse's face for his reaction.  
  
"I want you to have it."  
  
Danse isn't sure how to react. He's honored to be trusted with something so precious. His heart feels like it's going to burst with adoration at Arc's gesture. And yet he hesitates to take it.  
  
"That's Nate's," he says. "I shouldn't. I'm not trying to replace-"  
  
"Danse, you're not. You're not replacing him. Nobody can replace people like that," Arc assures, still holding the ring out to him. "It was Nate's before. And now I want you to have it."  
  
It fits almost perfectly on Danse's finger, just the tiniest amount too loose. But it doesn't slide off any further than his knuckle, and Arc is satisfied that it won't be lost.  
  
"Did I ever tell you how Nate and I decided on the engraving?" Arc asks, Danse's fingers slotting into the spaces between theirs. Danse shakes his head.  
  
"I don't think so."  
  
"Would you like to know?"  
  
"Always."


End file.
